Home > Dolorem > Science > Randomness in Science According to Wikipedia

Randomness in Science According to Wikipedia

Randomness means different things in various fields. Commonly, it means lack of pattern or predictability in events.

In the physical sciences

This is external link . In the 19th century, scientists used the idea of random motions of molecules in the development of statistical mechanics to explain phenomena in thermodynamics and the properties of gases. While this is internal link.

According to several standard interpretations of quantum mechanics, microscopic phenomena are objectively random.[6] That is, in an experiment that controls all causally relevant parameters, some aspects of the outcome still vary randomly.

For example, if you place a single unstable atom in a controlled environment, you cannot predict how long it will take for the atom to decay—but only the probability of decay in a given time.[7]

In biology

See Old Trafford at Google MapsThe modern evolutionary synthesis ascribes the observed diversity of life to natural selection, in which some random genetic mutations are retained in the gene pool due to the systematically improved chance for survival and reproduction that those mutated genes confer on individuals who possess them.

The characteristics of an organism arise to some extent deterministic (e.g., under the influence of genes and the environment) and to some extent randomly. For example, the density of freckles that appear on a person's skin is controlled by genes and exposure to light; whereas the exact location of individual freckles seems random.[8]

In mathematics

The mathematical theory of probability arose from attempts to formulate mathematical descriptions of chance events, originally in the context of gambling, but later in connection with physics. Statistics is used to infer the underlying probability distribution of a collection of empirical observations. For the purposes of simulation, it is necessary to have a large supply of random numbers or means to generate them on demand.

000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111

Pi certainly seems to behave this way. In the first six billion decimal places of pi, each of the digits from 0 through 9 shows up about six hundred million times. Yet such results, conceivably accidental, do not prove normality even in base 10, much less normality in other number bases.[9]